


Safe and Sound

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Durin Family, Durin Feels, Dwarves In Exile, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Kid Fic, Kink Meme, Pre-Quest, bb!dorf addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:30:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a prompt in the kink meme, "He doesn't give them anywhere near often enough but when he does, Thorin gives the best hugs." </p><p>Dís doesn't know what frightens her more: their exile or her parents' arguments. Thorin can do nothing about either, but he tries to comfort her as best he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe and Sound

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story. "Safe & Sound" is the property of Taylor Swift. Read the original prompt and fill here: http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/7346.html?thread=17195186#t17195186
> 
> This is meant to take place _very_ early in their exile, within the first year. Dís is just on the cusp of 6/7, Frerin's about 10 and Dwalin and Thorin are hovering around 15/16.

 

_Just close your eyes_  
 _The sun is going down._  
 _You'll be alright._  
 _No one can hurt you now._

The night air was cold and her parents were screaming at each other. Dís imagined their words were like icicles themselves, freezing somewhere in their hearts, growing out their mouths and cutting their tongues as they spat and snarled like cats fighting over fish bones in an alley. She’d seen that once, watched in horrified fascination as they tore at one another over rubbish, claws out, scratching and yowling until one lay dead and the other took its worthless prize back to its den.  
  
Was that a fate her parents would share? Would they continue to shout and rail at one another until they were shredded apart by their own cruelty and one or both of them lay dead and bleeding red on dirty snow?  
  
Tears leaked out from behind her tightly shut eyelids. Ama and Ada thought she was sleeping. They would not have shouted so otherwise. Maybe she was sleeping. Maybe it was all just a bad dream. All of it. If she wished with all her heart, she would open her eyes and wake up in her own room under the Mountain and her parents would love each other and not fight anymore.  
  
When she dared to open one eye and saw only the oilskin of their tent, her heart felt heavy as a stone. Even if she woke up safe and sound at home, the arguing was not a product of her nightmare’s imagination. Ama and Ada fought even before the dragon came, maybe more. It was simply easier to hear them without stone walls separating the nursery from their bedroom.  
  
Dís curled up into a little ball beneath the heavy, fur-lined coat that lay abandoned in Thorin’s usual sleeping place beside her. It was her brother’s coat and to hide within it made her feel a tiny bit better. The thick lining muffled the sound, though not as well as her heavy bedroom door. And it smelled of him, like new metal, old sweat and lye soap. If she again closed her eyes tight and pretended _very_ hard she could imagine it was her brother’s arms around her, rather than the folds of his coat. Thorin had strong arms, he was big enough to fit herself and Frerin in them, but he did not often have time for lingering embraces.  
  
When there was work to be had, he was gone from sun-up to sundown and so tired he hardly had time to mutter goodnight before he was snoring in his pillows. Dís almost liked it when there was no work because then Thorin trained for battle with the other lads and she could stay nearby and watch as long as she promised not to get too close to the fray. She _almost_ liked it because when there was no work, there was no food and they all went to bed hungry.  
  
Thorin was taking the watch with Dwalin and Frerin could stay up late with them because he was older than her. Dís had to go to sleep, her father picked her up and held her fast in his arms when she tried to sneak away and join them. _Little dwarflings need their rest,_ he said before he deposited her in the tent. But how could she rest when they were being so _loud_?

As if in answer to her unvoiced question, the shouting stopped abruptly. Another voice, softer, said, “I’ve just come to fetch my coat.”  
  
Her father snorted and said, “Should've taken it before. Any fool could have told you it’s going to snow.”  
  
“None obliged me.”  
  
“Don’t wake your sister,” her mother ordered.  
  
But Dís was already awake and Thorin looked into her tearful blue eyes when he made to lift his coat off the floor of the tent. Glancing over his shoulder at the tent flap, he frowned deeply and Dís frowned right back. Was he angry with her for borrowing his coat? For crying on the lining? For being awake when their mother expected her to sleep?  
  
“Don’t make a sound,” he cautioned her, wrapping her up tight in his coat. To ensure she was fully covered, he also picked up a bulky fur from the floor of the tent and carried his sister out in his arms, though to an outside observer, it would seem he only had his coat and some bedding.  
  
“Don’t tell me Frerin forgot his as well,” Thráin grumbled. Dís imagined he crossed his arms over his chest, looking even broader than he already was and more disapproving. “If he can’t remember his coat, he’s not suited to pass time with the night watch.”  
  
“I’m just bringing another for when the snow comes,” Thorin said. “You can’t be too warm on a night like this.”  
  
“Aye,” his father agreed. “If only you remember that ere the watch started, I’d say _you_ were nearly ready to take the responsibility on as well.”  
  
“Supper’s only just ended,” Freya replied testily. “It’s not as though we’ll be set upon by orcs as we douse the fires.”  
  
“Know a great deal about such things, do you?” her husband asked rhetorically. “I didn’t know orcs set stock by mealtimes. You think they don’t want to take a chance of ruining the crockery?”  
  
Thorin bid his parents good night, but neither heard him, already deeply entrenched in another pointless argument which neither would win. His father was right, in his own way. about the lack of responsibility he had been given. Thorin was considered too young and green to scan the perimeter of the camp for thieves and the like. He and Dwalin were tasked with keeping an eye on the ponies, an utterly boring appointment that was so unlikely to land them in any trouble that no one made a fuss when Frerin joined them.  
  
When they were well away from his parents, Thorin unwrapped his sister from the bundle he’d been carrying. Her face was a little red from being overheated, but her eyes were dry at last. “You’re going t’be in trouble for stealing me,” she informed him, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.  
  
“It’ll have to be our secret, then,” Thorin replied mildly, setting her on his feet so he could put his coat on. The fur he handed to Dís, who wrapped it around her shoulders. It was much too long and trailed on the frozen ground. Thorin put a hand on her shoulder and guided her to the small fire around which Frerin and Dwalin were huddled side by side, his youngest brother looking up at his best friend with rapt, slack-jawed attention.

“ _Then_ what happened?” he demanded.  
  
“Well, once the vows were said and the feast begun, Sognir had all the doors sealed - great stone doors, high as the mountain itself and carved three foot thick,” Dwalin narrated, his voice low and hushed, which made Frerin strain his ears to listen harder. “The wedding guests thought he was going to lead a toast, but he poured his cup of wine, red as blood, on the bride and bridegroom. Then he took up a torch - ”  
  
“And they all lived happily ever after,” Thorin interrupted, pulling Dís close to his side.  
  
Dwalin didn’t miss a beat. He took one look at the little dwarfling beside her brother and nodded once. “That they did,” he said to Frerin who was looking at him skeptically.  
  
“That doesn’t sound right,” he favored Dwalin with a very confused look. “Why’d he throw his glass of spirits on ‘em? Why’d he take up a torch?”  
  
“Can't recall,” Dwalin shrugged, moving over so Thorin could sit with Dís close to the fire. “There been a lot of half-dead nags stolen round about that we need another to help us guard the mounts?”  
  
Thorin smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “Nah, I just wanted better company than you two,” he said, smoothing Dís’s hair where it stuck up wildly out of her braids. No one prepared her hair before she was sent to bed, he noted with disapproval, for her hair was plaited far too tightly to sleep comfortably. “All quiet?” he asked, unraveling her hair so that he could properly ready his sister for bed.

“As the grave,” Dwalin confirmed.  
  
“Worse,” Frerin grumbled. “At least there’s things to look at in a tomb. Nothing out here but the arse-ends of ponies. And Dwalin. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.”  
  
It took only a halfhearted swipe of one of Dwalin’s broad hands to send Frerin sprawling on the ground, the wind knocked out of him. “You ought to show a bit more respect for your elders,” his cousin said primly, leaning his chin on his hand and watching Thorin braid his sister’s hair for lack of anything better to look at.  
  
Frerin got up and tried to tackle Dwalin, but he might as well have tried to move a mountain for all the good it did him. “Aw, neither of you can take a joke,” he moaned, punching Dwalin hard on the arm and only bruising his knuckles in the process. “Elder’s right.You’re seventy-one going on two-hundred. If I wanted to waste time with miserable old codgers, I’d just follow Ada around all day.”  
  
“You’re welcome to go back to the tent,” Thorin said, not looking up from his sister’s hair. Dís locked eyes with Frerin instead, shaking her head and ruining her brother’s progress.  
  
“Don’t,” she advised, unusually quiet and serious. “They’re shouting.”  
  
That was all that needed to be said, Frerin slumped back on the ground and Thorin’s mouth thinned to a mere line within his beard. Dwalin did not say a word, but he looked unhappy too, the orange-red light of the fire reflecting in his dark eyes. “S’not right,” he muttered, his voice pitched even lower than it had been when he was trying to spook Frerin with his story. “Not when the lass is meant to be sleeping and all.”  
  
Thorin looked up sharply, but did not utter the rebuke that was Dwalin’s due for speaking so disrespectfully of his kin and prince and princess besides. What would be the point? Thorin agreed with him wholeheartedly anyway. “Fire’s getting low,” he observed instead.  
  
Dwalin nodded and got to his feet. “I’ll fetch some wood,” he said, reaching down and hauling Frerin up with him. “Come along, make yourself useful.”  
  
“Oh, what, greybeard, you need a hand hauling wood?” he teased. Frerin was always teasing, always smiling. It was as he said earlier, he had enough of misery around him without adding more himself. “Shall I fetch your walking stick for you?”  
  
Dwalin rested a hand atop Frerin’s head and steered the smaller lad toward the interior of the camp. “Nah, you’ll do just as well,” he said and the pair of the disappeared into the darkness beyond the light of the fire.

Dís squirmed and scooted back closer to her brother. “I’m nearly done,” he said, but it was not impatience that made her antsy.  
  
“I’m cold,” she complained, for the fur kept the chill off her shoulders and chest, but her stocking feet felt the chill and her bare face.  
  
Thorin stopped plaiting her hair and, without being asked, picked Dís up in his arms, settling her on his lap. He untied the clasps of his coat and tucked her right inside against his chest, wrapping both arms around her firmly. Dís snuggled against him and wriggled her arms around his waist, holding him as tightly as she could.  
  
This was the sort of embrace she wanted, but received far too infrequently to suit her. Thorin was much bigger than her, being nearly grown, and warm, like he had a fire of his very own right inside his chest all around his heart. It thumped steadily right under her ear and Dís closed her eyes, listening to it closely, letting it drown out the crackling of the fire and the noise that drifted over to them from the camp. He tucked his head down so that his chin rested gently on her head and he let out a breath that seemed to draw her in even closer. With his arms as her shield and his chest as her fortress walls, she felt that nothing, not the cold, nor the threat of orcs, nor the fear of her parents’ fighting could ever harm her.  
  
Even rarer than a true embrace from her brother was a song. Frerin was always humming to himself, rearranging the words of songs to make her laugh and correct him or else singing her to sleep. Thorin had a good voice, deep and strong, but he employed it much less frequently. When he sang just for her, Dís felt special, like she’d been given a present. Now he sang to her very quietly, but clearly, rocking her just a little. It was on the tip of her tongue to remind her brother that she was not a _baby_ , but she was so comfortable and so cozy, she could not make herself say the words.  
  
Dís fell asleep soon after, but woke when she was laid down, alone, without the circle of her brother’s arms to protect her. Her eyelids fluttered open, but she needn’t have feared; Thorin was right beside her all along.  
  
When she opened her eyes she saw Thorin tucking her beneath the blankets in the tent. Frerin crawled in beside her on the left, asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. Thorin lay down on her right, one heavy arm thrown protectively over her, his fingers just barely brushing his brother’s side beneath the furs. They were not beneath the mountain, but in a way, she was home. Safe and sound.

 

_Come morning light_  
 _You and I'll be_  
 _Safe and Sound._

**Author's Note:**

> Usually, the Ris win hands-down as far as family dysfunction goes. But sometimes Thráin and Freya provide them with some competition in that area. *sigh* Freaking Durins.


End file.
